If you’re adding a surround-sound system to a family room, or even transforming a basement into a theater, you’re not always going to have perfect conditions for hiding wires.
When you’re connecting your receiver to two or four surround speakers, or maybe front LCR speakers, on the other side of the room depending on where your equipment rack is, it can be tough to conceal all of that wiring. Especially if you don’t have the luxury, or tools, to route everything inside walls or within a drop ceiling or down below to the basement and back up again.
You may be able to pull up carpeting or remove the baseboards, tack the wiring down, and replace the coverings. You may even have the wherewithal to drill and snake through baseboards without removing them. Perhaps you live in a condo or apartment where tinkering with walls or ceilings isn’t even an option.
And you can always tape, staple or tack the wire in low-profile or inconspicuous areas of the wall, perhaps behind furniture, to achieve solid results (or at least appease your significant other).
If your answer to the wiring question is none of the above, check out this slideshow of 5 Solutions to Hiding Speaker Wire.
These are only a handful of suggestions. If you didn’t fish through walls or drop ceilings, how did you conceal the speaker wiring in your media room or theater? Feel free to add suggestions in a comment below.
A friend of mine came up with a rather elegant solution to using expensive ‘flat’ cables if your walls are covered with drywall. He cut into the drywall using a router with a bit set to cut 3/8 of an inch in, and slightly wider than the cable he wanted to install. He then ran the cable in the groove, drywalled over the track, and repainted the wall.
Again, I wouldn’t suggest this to anyone that isn’t handy with doing drywall, as the results can look horrible if you don’t know what you are doing.
I particularly like the ability to use speaker cable of my choosing rather than whatever wire a company feels like flogging.
Name:
Email:
Remember my personal information
Notify me of follow-up comments?
Please answer the question below:
Type the 4th letter of the word "theater":
Electronic House is now available in a digital edition. Learn more.
Awesome article. Hoping to do something similar with my new home and iPhone/Creston… 
Slideshow
View Slideshow
Stay up-to-date with home electronics. 
Weekly email offers tips, info and product news.
Get the content that's important to you.
Here’s something interesting that I stumbled across. If you’re fortunate enough to be renovating or undergoing new construction there’s a really handy system available from Homepath Products that sits behind the sheetrock. It lets you change cables with technology changes and is also designed so that you can add outlets after the drywall is in place. Here’s the link to their video:
http://www.homepathproducts.com/homepath/introducing.php